I have a 1998 Jeep Grand Cherokee that has about 165K miles on it. I bought it used in 2004 and a week later, I started experiencing the following problems:
Originally, the Jeep would start and would run fine but nothing on the dashboard would work - gauges, mileage, lights, nothing. AC and power winds also wouldn’t work. After several days, everything would start working fine again. This occurred three or four times during the winter. I got it checked out and the shop said that the body control module was shorting out, and that when it was wet was when it was having problems.
In 2005, the Jeep started having an issue with not starting. It would crank but not turn over. I discovered that if I disconnected the battery for a minute and then reconnected it, the Jeep would start up just fine. I’ve been doing this ever since.
I had the BCM replaced in 2006 and I didn’t have any problems with the Jeep starting or with the gauges for about 9 months. Then everything started happening again. Now I have to disconnect the battery about once a month to get the Jeep to start.
I figure there must be something else other than just the BCM being bad since this is the second BCM I’ve been through. I think there must be something else causing the BCM to go bad, but I don’t know what. Any suggestions would be appreciated.